Leadership is important. We require centralized positions of power to delegate responsibilities to others and bring to life some unified vision. If every decision was up to a vote, large and complex projects would never get enough momentum to be completed.
Unfortunately, we've learned that too much centralized power is definitively a bad thing. A few bad actors at the top ensures the bridges will be burnt for everyone else while the structure of rulership goes stagnant. The leaders who were once charged with protecting the interests of the people turn around and exploit the power for personal gain.
This is why I see DPOS as such an absolutely necessary consensus algorithm. It is the closest thing we have to our already established governance structures. Sure, it's less decentralized than POW in a few different ways. However, those sacrifices likely don't matter much if the currency distribution is a good one.
A big advantage dpos has over traditional republics is a weighted voting system. At first, it looks like a big red flag; you can pay money to cast a bigger vote? That's a problem! We would never do that in our democracy!
Every politician has to pay to manipulate public perception. Politicians have been manipulating these numbers games for centuries. At least with DPOS we aren't being tricked into thinking that everyone's vote matters equally. It's a much more transparent system.
A DPOS with stake in the hands of trustworthy individuals ensures that the leaders elected are also trustworthy. Worst case scenario: Incompetence == Decentralization
There's also a certain level of radically increased competition in the space to ensure that leaders have the best interest of everyone in mind. The simple fact that a cryptocurrency is the foundation of value of the governance structure is a big part of this. Because everyone in the governance structure has stake and controls inflation of the underlying currency, there is a much bigger intensive for the entire network to work together to increase its value for the benefit of all.
The ability cut out bureaucratic red tape and streamline the decision making process is another huge advantage. If one of our politicians (witnesses) starts harming the network we can vote them out within seconds. Try doing that in a traditional government.
This healthy competition is simply the open source nature of crypto. Sure, there aren't a lot of DPOS coins out there now, but just wait. There are going to be a lot of options for a lot of different communities. Logic dictates that the best networks that offer the most value to their communities will be the ones with the highest rates of adoption.
We already see that Steem may end of being the pinnacle project that uses SMT/SteemEngine to create a myriad of other DPOS sidechains. Like Ethereum, we will incubate thousands of projects until they are ready to stand on their own two feet.
Money rules the world, and while many people seem to complain about how much politicians get paid, they really make very little money comparatively to how much power they wield. Our system almost seems purposely designed so that politicians are greatly incentivized to be bought and sold by billionaires.
Someone who's making a low six figure income has the power to shift millions or even billions of dollars by manipulating the law for or against certain entities on a global scale. When we think about politics in this way, it's obvious that people with that much power should be getting paid quite a bit more to secure the network.
Just look at how much we pay witnesses on Steem. 10% of all inflation goes to 20 people? It's a lot, and it's also justified. The goal should be to put the most incorruptible people in charge, pay them well for their essential service, and have the ability to kick them to the curb the second they fuck it up. This is possible with DPOS but not with traditional republics around the globe.
At the core of everything is money. Simply the ability to create and control currency is going to change our governance structures for all time. Will they be perfect? Far from it. However, they will be good enough, and the ones that aren't will die off while the rest evolve, just like the rest of life on this planet.
